COMPASS Pathways expands its Discovery Center through new collaborations with world-leading scientists

COMPASS Pathways expands its Discovery Center through new collaborations with world-leading scientists

Adam Halberstadt and John McCorvy join Jason Wallach to develop new psychedelic compounds at the virtual Discovery Center

London, UK – 9 February 2021

COMPASS Pathways plc (Nasdaq: CMPS) (“COMPASS”), a mental health care company dedicated to accelerating patient access to evidence-based innovation in mental health, announced today that it has expanded its Discovery Center, through collaborations with world-leading laboratories at UC San Diego, School of Medicine, and Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW). Adam Halberstadt PhD, Associate Professor, Psychiatry, UC San Diego, and John D McCorvy PhD, Assistant Professor, Department of Cell Biology, Neurobiology and Anatomy, MCW, and their teams, will join Jason Wallach PhD, Assistant Professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of the Sciences (Philadelphia), at the Discovery Center, a group of researchers working together, virtually.
 
The COMPASS Discovery Center was established in August 2020 through a sponsored research agreement between COMPASS and University of the Sciences. It is led by Jason Wallach’s laboratory at University of the Sciences and is now expanding its research network across the US, with Adam Halberstadt in San Diego, and John McCorvy in Wisconsin. The scientists intend to develop new, optimised psychedelic compounds to address unmet medical need. COMPASS will be the exclusive licensee for all new compounds generated.

Adam Halberstadt PhD is an expert on the behavioural neuropharmacology of psychedelics. He leads a team studying how psychedelics interact with serotonin systems and the implications for psychedelic therapy. Dr Halberstadt was the co-editor of the book Behavioural Neurobiology of Psychedelic Drugs and developed an efficient, automated head-twitch response preclinical assay that is now helping to expedite the screening of novel psychedelic compounds.

John McCorvy PhD is a 5-HT receptor pharmacologist and expert in G protein-coupled receptor (GPCR) signalling. His lab at MCW studies multiple aspects of GPCR signalling elicited by psychedelic, antipsychotic and antidepressant drugs. This work includes the importance of functional selectivity, whereby different drugs bind to the same receptor to cause different effects. He will be conducting detailed pharmacological characterisations of new compounds.